


We're Running Out (Of Words to Say)

by define_serenity



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Drabble, Drabble Collection, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-19 12:54:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22711138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/define_serenity/pseuds/define_serenity
Summary: “I can speed to Chicago for our favorite pizza,” he interjects, “and then maybe that cute bakery in New York to—”“Barry!” Frost calls, Caitlin’s eyes flashing white.He stops dead in his tracks.Then, in Caitlin’s voice, “I think we need to talk.”“Look”—he rubs the back of his neck—“I got a little carried away, okay? I shouldn’t have said what I said when I said it and—”SERIES OF UNRELATED DRABBLES
Relationships: Barry Allen/Caitlin Snow, Barry Allen/Killer Frost/Caitlin Snow, Killer Frost/Savitar
Comments: 19
Kudos: 83





	1. Caitlin/Savitar

**Author's Note:**

> Series of unrelated drabbles for **@simplysnowbarry** 's Valentine event, all short stories based on the prompts posted for the challenge. 
> 
> Most drabbles have a different Barry/Caitlin character combination.
> 
> INDIVIDUAL WARNINGS ARE ADDED TO THE CHAPTERS!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: ANGST, implied character death, hurt/comfort

“ _Caitlin_ ,” Barry calls behind her, his voice caught in the violent gales terrorizing Central City, the wisp of desperation lost in the wild ruckus of a black hole splitting open the sky above them.

“Caitlin!” Cisco shouts, as do Iris and Joe, but she can’t bring herself to let go.

How was this happening again?

“You don’t have to do this,” she says, hair beating at her face like a whip, but rather than get it out of the way her fingers wring deeper into Savitar’s waist, holding onto him for dear life.

Why would the universe beg this from her again?

“This world will rip itself apart if I don’t.”

Caitlin shakes her head, desperation hers this time. “We can find another way.”

Slender fingers brush along her cheek, trace the shell of her ear as if by memory, push her hair out of the way. Her eyes fall shut as she turns into the warmth of his palm, pushing her lips to the pulsepoint along his wrist— his heart races, much like hers.

“If I could go back, I would change so many things.”

Savitar’s lips push up against her forehead, and her fingers dig deeper still, sobs making their way up her throat. If he could go back, if Barry could go back— the distinction was so thin, so fragile it may as well not exist. If Savitar could go back it’d be Barry making the decisions, and—

No, she mustn’t think that way.

There was something tragically poetic about it, how Barry’d created his own worst enemy, and now Savitar was the only one fast enough to put the world he’d broken back together.

She just wishes there was another way.

“Tell me...” his voice softens, his breath warm against her skin, and whispers, “Just once.”

Her eyes open.

What he asks for is too much, she thinks, too big, too closely caught to the event horizon not to get swept up in its well of gravity.

So she kisses him instead, rises on her toes and hooks a hand around his neck, melting their mouths together beneath the end of the world. Because, oh, does she love him, against her better judgment, despite the hatred animating his bones, but admitting that, even to herself, would have repercussions reaching much further than this timeline alone.

“Come back to me,” she says instead, the first lover she asks outright, wishing for a do-over and a paradox at the same time, or, perhaps, simply offering him the strength to see this through. She’s not sure. Everything’s gotten so terribly confused.

Her hands fall away. Their bodies separate.

Savitar casts down his eyes, knowing as well as Barry does what he’s putting her through.

He runs, faster than the speed of light, headfirst into the singularity.

She can’t look at Barry, who can’t look at his future reflected, can’t offer himself any kindness despite the fact that now Savitar is the hero of this story.

Savitar doesn’t come back.

Central City breathes a sigh of relief, along with the rest of the team, over this aberration that wore Barry’s face far too well, for far too long, finally being vanquished.

It leaves her terribly alone in her grief, with the black hole that opens in her chest devouring all the light, all at once, like it has too many times before. Ronnie ran and left her twice. Barry ran and broke in two.

“Tell me?” Barry asks hours later, in the same voice, the same intonation, yet it’s a question this time, like he can’t believe how she could possibly _ever_ love that version of him.

But, oh, did she love him, beyond anyone’s rational understanding.

She cries, “Just once?”, wiping at tears silently shed before Barry’s by her side. His green eyes are big and pleading, shining with tears just like hers, hoping for the same thing she’s hoped for since Savitar first appeared. Tell him. Just once. _I love you_.

Because, oh, does she love him, despite every argument between them, every fight, every shouting match about the ins and outs of his future self. How could he not see she loved the parts of him that were broken, the parts that matched her broken. The parts that were undeniably Barry’s as well.

She falls into his arms instead, buries her face into his shoulder, lets her grief run amok.

It’s another catch-22; she’s not sad Barry won’t become Savitar, that his heart will never have to learn how to break at a lover’s passing the way hers has several times over, or that he’ll never have to lose his capacity to see the good in people.

This is better.

This is kinder.


	2. Barry/Caitlin/Frost

The front door falls shut with a soft click, followed by the careful tick of Caitlin’s heels on the floorboards. She comes into view a few moments later, bag around her shoulder, scarf wrung between her hands.

“Barry,” she says solemnly.

“Hey!” Barry shoots up from the couch and walks over, pushing a quick kiss to her cheek before he skips into the kitchen in an effort to keep the conversation light. “I was thinking we could get take-out tonight?”

Rifling through some kitchen drawers he quickly locates the take-out menus, even though both of them have their favorite dishes pretty much memorized.

Back in the living room Caitlin’s taken off her coat and rolled up the sleeves of her blouse, clearly meaning business. “Barry, can you—”

“I can speed to Chicago for our favorite pizza,” he interjects, “and then maybe that cute bakery in New York to—”

“ _Barry_!” Frost calls, Caitlin’s eyes flashing white.

He stops dead in his tracks.

Then, in Caitlin’s voice, “I think we need to talk.”

“Look”—he rubs the back of his neck—“I got a little carried away, okay? I shouldn’t have said what I said when I said it and—”

He shakes his head, disappointed in himself. After months of give and take, trial and error, both fight _and_ flight, they’d finally found some peace balancing their curious situation; he and Caitlin were in a great place as were he and Frost and he had to go and ruin that by blurting out _I love you_ in the middle of a date? They weren’t ready for that.

“Can we rewind? Start over?”

Caitlin cocks an eyebrow, but it’s Frost who sounds, “ _Nuh-uh_ ” with a brief white twinkle in Caitlin’s brown irises.

His eyes close, heart dropping to his stomach. Why did his mouth always have to speak before his mind had well and good decided on what to say?

It wasn’t easy, navigating a relationship with two different people who lived in the same body but they’d made it work; Caitlin let him be the romantic, a stuttering idiot that still had her in stitches, a reckless hero though that often bit him in the ass, while Frost liked taking charge, learn from him what he’d often learned from Caitlin first. It worked. It was fun and cooky and at times heartbreaking, but it worked.

He’d only said what he felt, what’d been blooming nonstop for months.

He can’t believe he ruined that.

“Barry,” Caitlin calls softly, before her hands land on his chest.

His eyes open, and his hands move to cover hers. Looking down into her brilliant eyes his heart only grows fonder, bigger, his love for her much deeper than any words could possibly describe— Caitlin and Frost are both anchors he and The Flash need, to keep him grounded, to keep him dreaming, to make sure he doesn’t take any unnecessary risks or to provide back-up. What would his life look like without them?

“What Frost means,” Caitlin says, “is we don’t have to. You took us by surprise, Barry, but of course we love you.”

Barry’s eyebrows rise. “We?”

“Me. Frost.” Caitlin smiles, her nose scrunching up. “That weird place where we exist simultaneously.”

Barry laughs, chest expanding and well before Caitlin manages to get her “I love you, Barry,” out completely he’s leaned in for a kiss; Caitlin giggles, reaching her arms around his neck as her lips part against his.

When he pulls back it’s Frost who meets his eyes, who promptly sighs and rolls her eyes. “ _I guess I love you too_.”


	3. Flash/Frost

“Frost!”

The Flash’s voice travels across the rooftop, over the tumult of the city below, all the way to her perch on the farthest ledge.

“Cisco, are you okay?” she hears him ask his friend, no doubt knelt by his side to undo the ropes tied around his wrists.

“She wants to talk,” Cisco says, his voice even and monotone.

She definitely didn’t make a friend out of him.

“What?”

“She wants _to talk_.”

An awkward silence follows Cisco’s less-than-impressed statement, The Flash’s quick feet shuffling back and forth for a while before a soft tentative “Blue?” sounds from a few feet away.

She likes it when he calls her that.

Below the city’s kept on turning, weirdly so, as if it hasn’t lost one of its own tonight, as if her actions have gone entirely unnoticed like her pain has. Her legs dangle precariously over the streets ten stories down, her cheeks clammy from the tears she shed earlier.

She needed someone to notice.

“Everything okay?” The Flash asks, sitting down next to her on the ledge, looking back at Cisco over his shoulder.

“I killed someone today.”

She knows what he must think, _finally living up to her name_ — but Killer Frost is not her name, it’s the name the papers gave her, it had that headline quality the press so desperately needed every metahuman to have, edgy, catchy, with an underlying hint of warning attached to it.

To her surprise, The Flash doesn’t do her the same discourtesy.

“You saved a life.”

A small smile slips to a corner of her mouth. Of course he’d know that. She imagines this would be a whole different kind of conversation had her killing resulted from a need for revenge, or plain old anger, and not an unfortunate accident; the assailant didn’t have to shoot at her or the policemen, he didn’t have to charge at her.

And yet none of it sat right with her.

“Does that make it better?”

A life lost was still a life gone.

She still felt responsible.

“Easier to- square away, maybe,” The Flash says, half sighing, “I’ve gotten-”

His hesitation is telling of something she’s felt all day, a heaviness lodged right beneath her ribs, the weight of her actions and their consequences— it’s difficult to breathe around, knowing there’s nothing she could’ve done different, like The Flash couldn’t save the metas fallen to their deaths, trapped in their own devices, responsible for their own demise.

Is this what being a hero felt like?

“I’ve lost people,” the hero speedster admits. “It doesn’t get any easier.”

“Good.”

She doesn’t want it to get any easier. In fact, from now on she’ll leave any heroics to The Flash and his team. What did she care about innocent women being assaulted in broad daylight? It was their fault for being so visible, anyway. She couldn’t carry this entire city.

Frost sighs.

“For future reference,” The Flash says. “You don’t have to kidnap my friends to get my attention. Just- ask? Next time?”

“Sure.” She smiles.

Silence settles over them. Maybe being a hero isn’t so bad, if it stops The Flash from wanting to lock her up in Iron Heights.

“Thanks, Red.”


	4. Savitar/Killer Frost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 100-word drabble!

“So what will it be tonight?”

Savitar gestures across the horizon, at the city at their mercy, burning below them in a grand spectacle of violent reds and white-hot oranges.

“Mischief?” He cocks an eyebrow, followed by a wicked grin that makes her want to sink her teeth into him so deep they become indistinguishable. “Mayhem?”

His hands slip down her waist while her arms wrap around his neck.

“It is Valentine’s Day, after all.”

Their mouths crash together bruised and bloody, hungry for love in all the wrong places.

“ _Murder_ ,” Killer Frost whispers, a clear twinkle in her eyes.


	5. Barry/Caitlin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 100-word drabble!

Early morning sun slips between the lime green curtains, tripping along Caitlin skin as she pulls on Barry’s shirt, the sleeves too long, the blue cotton caught just below her bum.

She giggles—“What?”—falling back into bed, cuddling up close next to him.

Barry beams, enchanted by the sleep still caught around her eyes. “My clothes look better on you than they do on me.”

“Do they now, Dr. Allen?”

Caitlin leans in and brushes her lips over his, laughter caught between their mouths as they lose themselves to kisses.

It definitely beats sneaking around in the on-call room. 


	6. Flash/Frost

“If I run up and down the coastline fast enough I may be able to break its momentum!”

Barry’s voice barely reaches over the roar of the wave train, the tsunami unbroken by her freezing a large portion of the waves— the smashing force of the water is too great, rushing too fast toward them, the power destructive and too great to overlook. A wall of water was coming at them over the entire breadth of Central City’s coastline, and there was no way they’d be able to stop it, not to mention the debris in its wake.

“You can’t!” she shouts, body thrumming with a sensation at once familiar and foreign, like some far-off memory she can’t wrap her head around, a dream somewhere in her peripheral vision. “If you get caught by the wave—”

She doesn’t need to be a rocket scientist for that, but the calculations coarse through her nonetheless— if the undercurrents take him his speed won’t help, he’ll lose his bearings and won’t be able to find his way home to her.

Barry’s hands land on her shoulders. “Then I won’t get caught.”

The assurance does little to assuage her worry, and the memory creeps closer, the rushed hint of fear, the pleading.

“I don’t like this.”

“I have to try.”

Then it hits her.

 _Ronnie_.

Ronnie said that too, and it nearly split Caity in half. What might it do to her should Barry not come back from this? They’ve barely started, still right on the cusp of something new and exciting and she’s not about to let some stinking tsunami take that away from her.

She could stop him, freeze him to the ground where he stood, but—

Frost looks at the wave hurtling toward the city, filled with a devastating destructive force, then back at the man she loves. The Flash. Central City’s bespoke hero.

He’ll never forgive her should she stop him.

So she rises on her toes and pulls him into a kiss, crashes their mouths together while somewhere in a corner of her subconscious Caity huffs the words _drama queen_. But she won’t hear that; if he has to go she’ll have her goodbye, come hell or _high water_.

Red gloves wind through her long hair.

“If you die I’m gonna kill you.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Barry winks, and flashes her that cocky boyish grin. “See you in a New York minute.”

Frost rolls her eyes.

 _Insufferable buffoon_ , she thinks, despite worry stripping her heart naked.

**\- fin -**

**Author's Note:**

> ♥ Liked what you read?  
> *Please comment and kudos below  
> *[Reblog on tumblr](https://ttinycourageous.tumblr.com/post/190820889408)


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